Well On Their Way
by Harkpad
Summary: Clint took a drink, and said into his glass, "Dumbest thing you ever did?" Bruce looked at him sharply, then shrugged. "Messed with gamma radiation?" "Nah, that's like me saying 'agreed to watch the Tesseract.' It doesn't count. Another dumb thing." "I never did another dumb thing," Bruce said, grinning.


**A/N: Thanks to dysprositos for beta awesomeness, including finding a better journal to use. It's nice having a scienc-y beta. This is just a little scene – no more, no less. **** I hope you enjoy! I wasn't sure to warn for Clint/Coulson – yes, they're implied together here, but Phil's not really in the story and it's not the point at all. It's a friendship scene. . . **

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They were well on their way to drunk, and it was something to see. Bruce was wearing his trademark brown jacket over a rumpled button down and a pair of loose-fitting khakis, and Clint was in a typical jeans and green hoodie combination. The team had also come to learn his affinity for a certain tattered blue baseball hat that he was wearing tonight for good measure.

No one at the pub knew who they were.

"What's the coolest place you've visited when not on a mission?" Bruce asked, tipping his beer and taking another swig. They'd been trading 'coolest' this and thats for a while now.

Clint thought for a moment and shrugged. "Don't get to do a lot of sightseeing, usually, but sometimes the intel gathering takes time. . . Barcelona, what's the name of that crazy architect? His cathedral."

Bruce raised an eyebrow. "Gaudi?"

"Yeah, yeah. Him. He built a cool park, too, but the cathedral. Shit. That place was _eerily_ cool."

"Lots of places for a sniper to hide in the Segrada Familia," Bruce said with a grin.

Clint glared at him. "Do you wander around thinking about the physics of the bricks you're walking on?"

"No?"

"Yeah, me neither." Clint paused, looking at his empty glass. "Wait. I mean. Oh, fuck it, you know what I mean. You want another drink?"

Bruce nodded as he finished his beer.

They were at a pub a few blocks from the Tower. They hadn't told anyone where they were going, although that meant that either Phil or Natasha could conceivably join them anytime now. Clint just showed up at Bruce's lab after being gone at SHIELD HQ all day and had told Bruce they were going out. No protests, no changing clothes, just going out. Bruce had followed, bemused.

Clint returned to the table and set two pints of dark beer on the table.

"What's the best beer you've had?" He asked. "Clearly you like the stuff."

Bruce looked over at the bar. "Chimay. Wait. Maybe Orval, but no one ever has that."

"Me, I don't care too much," Clint said with a grin. "I usually just drink whatever I get, although I will say that I can't drink beer in South America. No matter where we go."

"I liked some of it all right," Bruce said.

"Orval – that's made by monks, right?" Clint asked, betraying his claim of ignorance.

"Yeah, religious spirits," Bruce said, lifting his glass.

"I hate spirits," Clint mumbled into his glass.

"Ever seen a ghost?" Bruce asked, his eyes crinkling a little in a smile.

"Once," Clint replied, looking away.

"Yeah? Where?" Bruce asked.

"At the Tower when Phil came back," Clint said, looking at Bruce and smiling.

"Yeah, that was a good day."

"One of my best."

They drank quietly for a few minutes, just looking around the bar.

"Coolest trick you can do with a bow?" Bruce asked, finally, picking up where they'd left off.

Clint set his drink down on the table and crossed his arms, quirking his lips into a thoughtful pose. After a bit he shrugged and said, "The crowd always liked the shaving an arrow in half with another one. I did some cool variations on that."

Bruce smiled and nodded. "Robin Hood."

"Yeah. Guy was an amateur."

Bruce laughed.

Clint leaned forward. "Coolest journal you published in?" he asked earnestly.

Bruce raised an eyebrow and replied, "No one touched my stuff with a ten foot pole after the accident."

Clint shrugged. "So before the accident?"

Bruce thought back and then grinned, "Um, I guess Physical Review C? Why the hell do you care about my journal publications?"

"It was part of your world, right? Just curious."

"About my life?" Bruce challenged.

Clint nodded. "Aren't you curious about the rest of us? Well, I guess you don't have to be curious about Tony's. His kind of fits the 'open book' definition."

Bruce sighed, relaxing a bit. "I guess. I think I'd be fine with staying away from Natasha's back story, though."

Clint laughed. "Yeah. If you want to sleep at night, anyway."

Bruce nodded and took a drink.

"But you," Clint went on, unfazed, "You were an upstanding scientist and then got into the super serum research, right?"

Bruce nodded and drank some more. He didn't offer anything else.

Clint grinned a little. "Coolest place you ever took a date?"

Bruce laughed. "If I say the physics lab at Stanford would that lower your opinion of me?"

Clint sputtered in his beer. "Seriously? Okay. Wait. That was the coolest? Because it really was cool or because you've just never done better? Jesus, Banner."

"It was kind of cool. I set up this demonst—okay. Maybe it was just the best I've done."

Clint nodded. "Definitely."

"What about you?" Bruce countered. "Where's the coolest place you ever took someone?"

"Comic Con?" Clint said, taking a big drink.

Bruce just glared at him.

"No, well, that was pretty cool just for Phil's reactions, but no. Let's see." He took another drink and chuckled to himself. "When I was sixteen I took this girl I liked to the top of big top and we literally hung from the ropes and ate chocolate and made out. That was pretty cool."

"Did she think so?" Bruce asked, incredulous.

"Um, yeah? I guess so. I was sixteen. It was right before some heavy shit happened, too, so maybe I'm romanticizing it a bit."

"The good ol' days?" Bruce said.

Clint laughed. "Yeah. Yeah, that's them." He was silent for a bit, looking around again.

"Maybe we'll have Avenger 'good ol' days,'" Bruce said, taking a drink.

"When we're collecting our pensions?" Clint asked, shaking his head. "Right."

"Do you ever—" Bruce began, but didn't finish.

"Sometimes," Clint finished for him anyway. Bruce nodded and they drank some more.

"Coolest place you've ever hiked," Clint said, finally.

Bruce smiled. "That's easy. Pategonia, Argentina. Like something out of a fantasy movie. They say you can do it in seven days but I took two weeks because I just had to sit and stare so much."

"That's a good one," Clint said, nodding. "Phil's done it. You should talk to him about it sometime, Get him started on it and he won't shut up. Something about the forests."

"What about you?" Bruce asked.

"I got to go to Jordan for an op, once. Phil had been my handler for about two years and knew I hadn't taken any time off. He arranged to debrief me onsite and then handed me a backpack and took me to Petra. I'm not a religious guy, but . . . "

Bruce nodded. "Impressive?"

"A little mind-blowing, actually," Clint replied.

"We should all go," Bruce said thoughtfully.

Clint grinned, "Well, it would fulfill Steve's teambuilding requirements, but I'm not sure we want Tony in Jordan."

"True," Bruce said with a grin.

Clint took a drink, and said into his glass, "Dumbest thing you ever did?"

Bruce looked at him sharply, then shrugged. "Messed with gamma radiation?"

"Nah, that's like me saying 'agreed to watch the Tesseract.' It doesn't count. Another dumb thing."

"I never did another dumb thing," Bruce said, grinning.

"Shut up. You tried to take a date to the physics lab. Two for one?"

Bruce nodded. "Maybe. What about you?"

"There was this time I took a dare to eat a whole serving of Vindaloo Pork right before I had to show some junior agents the ropes at a training facility in India," Clint said, and Bruce pushed himself back from the table and laughed harder than he had in years. "I take it you've heard of it?"

"I tried it once," Bruce said, wiping his eyes. "A bite, Clint. I tried a bite. Shit."

"Yeah," Clint said, laughing, too. "I was in rough shape. It was a lunch break, too, and Sitwell said I couldn't do it. I did, but I went back to my quarters and threw up after taking the juniors around the training course that afternoon."

"That's hilarious, Clint."

"Yeah, misery. My misery was hilarious," he deadpanned, finishing his beer.

"Misery often is," Bruce said, still laughing and standing. "Let's get out of here."

They paid their tab and headed back to the tower.

Phil asked Clint later what he and Bruce talked about, and Clint replied, "Cool shit and misery. You should ask him about Patagonia sometime," and Phil's face lit up and he started in to 'did I tell you about this one waterfall…." And Clint smiled and listened to some of Phil's cool shit for a while, which was pretty awesome, really.


End file.
